This invention relates generally to oscillator circuits. More particularly, the present invention relates to a low power consumption oscillator circuit for an integrated circuit having transconductance amplifiers as the basic building blocks of the design.
Numerous types of oscillator circuit designs are well known in the art. Not all of these circuits, however, are suited for a low power integrated circuit application. Undesirable characteristics in prior art designs include excessive power consumption, complexity of design resulting in high component count and correspondingly large integrated circuit die area, as well as high sensitivity of the oscillator frequency to fluctuations in the power supply voltage.
What is desired, therefore, is an oscillator circuit design that is simple, consumes relatively little power, and provides an oscillator frequency that is substantially invariant with respect to changes in power supply voltage.